WiktionaryZ ... almost there

From Wordsandmore

Well, almost there for editability, not for full functionality.

Many of you don't know the story of WiktionaryZ and it would really be a long, long story to tell ... a story that started on 30th of August 2004.

Well ... what is WiktionaryZ ... of course it is a dictionary. Now one might ask: "So what?" And I answer: it is a very particular kind of dictionary ... "So what?" ... It is multilingual ... So what? ... Contrary to Wiktionary it is based on a relational database, but still has the Wiki functions ... So what? ... It is extendable ... So what? ... It will host contents in all languages, allow for tbx downloads, for direct connection to OmegaT and other software and ..., and ... and ... So what? ... It is more than we ourselves can even imagine ... and there are plenty of ways to use it we do not even know about ... So what? ... Well, so what do you imagine, would you like to know about it, are you searching for ... maybe it is there ...

And what is WiktionaryZ definitely not? ... An encyclopaedia, a textbook and ...

What WiktionaryZ is for us or in this case me? A dream becoming true ... providing free lexicological information not only to consult it, but also to use it, to merge different sources, to give it out in various formats for further usage in other applications ... and the most important thing is, it is free.

Once upon a time (no, it's not a fairy tale but sometimes it seems like one ;-) there was the beginning of Wikipedia and after some time people started to add lexicological information to encyclopaedic articles ... the pure encyclopaedians did not like that and they wanted to delete all that contents, but it was valid contents that served for a different scope ... so what to do with it ... that was the moment when Wiktionary was born. Wiktionary grew a different user base, people that were more interested in words, meanings, translations, sysnonyms, antonyms etc.

In 2004, besides the English Wiktionary, other Wiktionaries were created, according to the languages of Wikipedia. I remember the day when I saw the Italian Wiktionary ... it was just started and had 158 entries. Well, I started to add stuff and bit by bit we manually reached 1000 pages. Paul, who translated the user interface and really did a lot for the Italian Wiktionary and I were the main contributors there. There was no admin at that time.

Then on 30th of August 2004 I saw something that seemed incredible to me ... I saw strange stuff like {{-it-}}, {{-noun-}}, {{-trans-}}, {{en}}, {{nl}} instead of titles and other parts of the page ... I thought someone was heavily vandalising the Wiktionary ;-) ... but then: it was a registered user doing this ... GerardM ... and of course, being one of those who need to know and want to know I asked what he was doing there. This was the moment when I learnt that something like templates exist that could make our work much easier and faster.

It was real fun to copy and paste from one Wiktionary to the other without having to re-type all the language names, titles etc. But then ... hell ... there were some errors and copying and pasting the same page to many wiktionaries meant that we had to edit all these pages on the various wiktionaries manually to get the errors out ... hmmm ... that again meant multiplying efforts.

Well, you can imagine that we did not find this funny and that the logical discussion via Skype was about "how to avoid double work and make work only once, how to see one edit immediately anywhere ... that was the moment, when the work name of WiktionaryZ, Ultimate Wiktionary, was created. A name loved and hated, often discussed instead of the real features. It often seemed as if people were more caring about the name than about functionality. Or better: people were worrying a lot about our so revolutionary ideas.

These ideas, to my opinion, were not too revolutionary - they were thought to maximise results with the time people every day give to the projects - initially this was the basic thought - avoid double work, give more value to each contributor by taking their time and knowledge into consideration.

At a certain point Kennisnet provided a grant for its programming ... that was the moment when WiktionaryZ stated to become true. And even there: what at the beginning seemed a simple application today is a very complex piece of program code.

What we have today or better the way things are going to day do not only include our initial thoughts - WiktionaryZ is becoming much more than we initially thought. At a certain stage things started to happen. When talking to people we found out what they needed and we understood that this can be integrated - so why not just do it? What was meant to be a quite "simple" database now is one of the most complex ones around. Well I still look at it from a translator's point of view, but it is not only about us translators, it is about scientists, institutions and also about kids going to school and students. It is about co-operation between different worlds, about getting things togehter ...

WiktionaryZ has a different meaning for all of us - even us three, Gerard, Erik and me ... everyone of us has a different view.

Of course what I wrote here is not all, there's so much more to tell and I will edit this page from time to time adding things that come to mind. And of course there will be new articles over time telling about where the project stands.

Now you read this, you have an idea about what you could do with a dictionary, with a huge relational database containing terminology for many, many different users, to be used in tbx format for CAT-Tools, to be used for spell checkers, to be used for .... well, we would like to know your ideas, your hopes, your questions, your doubts ...

Thank you!